Letters to the Editor: 01.30.10

I'm very disappointed at our Mayor Adame for the comment he made after a citizen asked why public comments are not moved back to noon.

His response was, "We don't have to have public comments," and he was not going to move it because 75 percent of comments are negative.

Mr. Mayor, this is not your city. It belongs to the citizens of Corpus Christi and if things were done right there would be very few negative comments. This happened at the city council meeting held on Jan. 19.

Fabian Garcia Jr.

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Pick a small bank

Paul Krugman ("Bankers show they have no clue," Jan. 19) wrote "... we're in trouble entirely thanks to the dysfunctional nature of our own financial systems. Everyone understands this — everyone, it seems, except the financiers themselves."

Krugman is wrong. The financiers realize this. This greed-driven sector wants only one thing — to get things back to where they can continue to make outrageous, mostly unmerited, stupendous incomes at the risk of others. If it collapses again, they already have theirs, surely they will be bailed out again, and with new bailout money for bonuses they win threefold.

I would recommend that everyone withdraw all money from any major bank (most of which received hundred of millions of our money) and put it into whatever small, locally owned, independent bank you may find. Finding a small, locally owned, independent bank is harder and harder as hundreds have shut down in the last several years; alas, no bailout to the little guy.

The entire bailout program was backward. Small banks should have been stimulated first. Many small banks were "acquired" by the mega-banks with our money. Hundreds went out of business. The mega-banks should have paid the consequences of their behavior.

Thad G. Swann

Productivity's rise

Statistics for 2009 show that worker productivity went up 2.5 percent. It is amazing that a bad economy with high unemployment can cause employees to do a better job. Must be human nature. There are silver linings in every cloud.

Roland Beck, Portland

Only good choices

In response to "A shameful program" (Jan. 25) —

During my father's recent hospitalization, our family practice physician made morning rounds at 5:30 a.m. That, among numerous other things, awakened me to the demanding, heroic schedule of family practice doctors, who make morning and evening hospital rounds, have full days of patient care, are called evenings and weekends, and are present throughout the life and death cycles of their patients.

I recently attended a meeting regarding our doctor's new practice, which reflected the highest ideals of medicine: genuine concern for patient well-being, more time and attention for patients, annual preventive care physical and comprehensive wellness planning (for which an annual fee is charged), timely appointments, etc.

Many going with this new practice are making a financial sacrifice in the interest of improved medical care. Statistics indicate that patients in this wellness-oriented practice are hospitalized 50 percent less often (which in itself might balance the cost of the annual fee), in addition to many other health benefits. It was clearly explained that no one would be "left by the wayside," since the current medical group is bringing in new doctors, and patients will be assisted in transitioning.

There are no victims here, only good choices.

Theresa Moore

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Ideology, not history

Ronald Trowbridge's assertion (Jan. 17 forum, "Health plan may be unconstitutional") that the current health care legislation departs from the intentions of the framers of the Constitution has little relevance to the question of legal precedent. While Trowbridge correctly suggests that the framers wanted un-enumerated powers to be given to the states, scores of court decisions, responding to the needs of their historical contexts, have moved away from this original intention.

The framers never intended for the commerce clause to give the federal government extraordinary powers over the states, but neither did they intend to have a standing army in peacetime. Even the very power of the Supreme Court to review the constitutionality of acts of Congress was not enumerated in the Constitution. If we are to judge every act of Congress based on the strict intentions of the founders, much would not be constitutional.

Ultimately, Trowbridge's analysis reflects not an illumination of the true meaning of the Constitution (by necessity, a highly interpretive document), but rather his own assessment of the needs of our current society. Trowbridge writes that health care legislation "is an overdose of big government that may be toxic to the plain meaning and intent of the Constitution." This is an ideological argument, not an historical one.